I’ve written in the past about our scriptural obligation to love and care for immigrants. But it’s not just ancient scripture: the modern church teaches that we have an imperative here too. A little over 13 years ago, the church issued a statement on immigration. And that statement makes a couple really important assertions:
- The “bedrock moral issue” for the church is “how we treat each other as children of God.”
- Undocumented immigrants should have a pathway to legal status and the ability to work, even if this pathway doesn’t end in citizenship.
- Mass expulsion and the mistreatment of individuals have a bad history and any proposal to engage in such expulsion or mistreatment should give us serious pause.
On top of that, the General Handbook provides that “Church members offer their time, talents, and friendship to welcome immigrants and refugees as members of their communities.”
In one week, the U.S. will elect a new president. Right now, polls suggest that the result is a toss-up—both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have roughly equal chances of winning.
If he wins, Trump has promised to deport 15-20 million people. In fact, he has promised repeatedly to deport 4-6% of the US population. (This in spite of the fact that there are only about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. They could still hit the 15-20 million numbers, both because their definition of “undocumented immigrants” includes many people in the country legally and because Trump surrogates have expressed a willingness to deport families, including citizen children.)
These threats of mass deportation violate the “moral bedrock” that the church laid out years before Donald Trump made xenophobia a central plank of his campaign. Which raises the question: what plans does the church have to protect its immigrant members in the case of a Trump presidency?[fn1]
It must have plans. This is, after all, bedrock morality. Mass deportation and the dehumanization of immigrants flight squarely in the face of the church’s values. And it threatens nearly every stake, if not every ward, in the United States. (For real. No matter where you live, there are almost certainly undocumented immigrants—or immigrants seeking refugee status—in your ward.)
Which also devolves to the stake and ward level: every stake president, every bishop, every Relief Society and Elders Quorum president, every YW leader, every Primary president needs to have a plan for how they are going to protect the people in their care. The risk to our brothers and sisters (and almost certainly to some of us, too) is very real. This is a moral issue, the type of issue that the church reserves the right to speak to in spite of its general political neutrality, the church “reserves the right to address issues it believes have significant moral consequences or that directly affect the mission, teachings or operations of the Church.”
The mistreatment and mass deportation of immigrants have significant moral consequence, and directly affect the mission, teachings, and operations of the church. So I hope the church has a plan. In spite of its separation from the Boy Scouts, this is an instance where it needs, desperately, to be prepared.
[fn1] Even if Trump loses, any plans the church makes for protecting immigrants don’t become useless. While Harris is not threatening mass deportation on the scale that Trump revels in, Democrats aren’t angels on immigration either. Irrespective of who is in the White House, the church needs to actively work for the well-being of immigrants. But it’s exponentially more important in the face of a potential Trump presidency.